Image: Rings around a crescent

Image: Rings around a crescent
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

A crescent Saturn appears nestled within encircling rings in this Cassini spacecraft image. Clouds swirl through the atmosphere of the planet and a barely visible Prometheus orbits between the planet's main rings and its the thin F ring.

Saturn's Prometheus appears as a speck above the rings near the middle of the image.

This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 3 degrees below the ringplane.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera on Sept. 14, 2010, and was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles, or 2.6 million kilometers, from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 100 degrees.

Provided by JPL/NASA

Citation: Image: Rings around a crescent (2010, November 23) retrieved 29 March 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2010-11-image-crescent.html
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